


Brothers Again

by nagi_schwarz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 22:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11450544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Coda to season 9 ep First Born, but spoilers through The Purge. There are so many things Sam wants to say to Dean. What he wants to say most islet's be brothers again.Originally posted onLJback in 2014.





	Brothers Again

“Dean is a highly irrational person at times,” Castiel said.  
  
Sam looked up from his laptop, raised his eyebrows. “What has he done now? Gone on a hunt by himself?”  
  
“He is upset,” Castiel said, “at the way you are no longer familiar with him.”  
  
Sam bit back a sharp comment about how Dean had been too familiar with Sam and his body, shoving not one but two foreign sentient beings into it, all in the name of saving him. “How does that relate to his rationality, or lack thereof?”  
  
“Before,” Castiel said, “when you had been consorting with Ruby and Dean locked in you Bobby Singer’s panic room to drain the demon blood power from you, Bobby was concerned you were going to die.”  
  
“I felt like I was more than once,” Sam said.  
  
“Dean said  _at least he’ll die human_. And then he went to great lengths to save your life, including turning you into an angel vessel, which is not really human at all.” Castiel wore the same quizzical expression as when he’d tried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time after his grace was restored. “Not to mention he was so upset when Lucifer was inside you, and you let him in voluntarily.”  
  
Sam took a deep breath. “Few people have perfectly consistent moral philosophies.” Was he defending Dean? Really? Except Dean was his brother, and no one got to pick on him, no one but Sam. Not that Dean had gotten picked on that much in high school.  
  
“Were you speaking the truth, though?” Castiel asked. “If you were in Dean’s place, would you not have done everything in your power to keep you alive?”  
  
“No, I wouldn’t have.” Sam resumed typing rapidly.  
  
“But before --”  
  
“Before, when he was destined for hell, I found a way to keep him alive. A way that would have made him something other than human, that would have allowed him to live forever, and me alongside him if he so chose. But he said  _no_. So I respected that.”  
  
“Did you respect his last wishes not to expand your demonic heritage from Azazel?”  
  
“No,” Sam said, “but that was different.”  
  
Again with the quizzical peanut-butter-is-overwhelming look. “How so?”  
  
“Me training my demon power - that was me. Controlling myself. My own body.”  
  
“Until the addiction controlled you.”  
  
“Yes. But it was confined to my body. What I intended to do to Dean - that would have affected  _his_  body and  _his_  humanity. So when he said no, I listened to him.” Sam sighed and sat back. He was getting nowhere with his research.  
  
“But you are alive.”  
  
“Not by choice.”  
  
“You could kill yourself at any time.”  
  
Sam sighed and shook his head. “Forget it, Cas.”  
  
Castiel leaned forward. “Help me understand.”  
  
Sam drummed his fingers on the table top. “Remember when you had all the Leviathan inside of you?”  
  
“Yes. It was...unpleasant.”  
  
“I had Meg in me. And then I had Lucifer in me, which was unpleasant multiplied by a number beyond human counting. And then I had an angel in me who trapped me in my own mind and ran around killing my friends and hurting my family. And then I had a demon in me  _at the same time_. I had other people  _inside me_.”  
  
Castiel was silent while he contemplated the comparison between his situation and Sam’s.  
“Surely Dean --”  
  
“He’s never been possessed,” Sam said. “Never been made a vessel. From the day I was six months old, I’ve had something in me, something  _put_  in me against my will. It tainted me and shadowed me and eventually poisoned me. You said it yourself the first time we met - I was an abomination, the boy with the demon blood.”  
  
“Dean said the trials were purifying you.”  
  
“I didn’t finish them.”  
  
“Dean said --"  
  
“Dean said a lot of things that  _set me back on my heels_.” Sam pushed the chair back and stood up, started toward the kitchen. Only he didn’t need anything from the kitchen, so he did an about-face and headed for the nearest set of bookshelves.  
  
“Sam,” Castiel began.  
  
Sam shook his head. “Right before I went to face down Lucifer, Dean said it was time for him to trust me, for him to stop treating me like a little kid and let me be a man. But he doesn’t trust me. He hasn’t since Ruby. He  _blames me_  for  _losing my soul_  and then not telling him about it. I’d have told him about it, except I wasn’t really me, since I didn’t have a soul.”  
  
Castiel winced and ducked his head. “It was hubris on my part, to think I could rescue you from the cage in one fell swoop.”  
  
“He was mad at me for saving Amy, a girl who killed her own mother to save me, but then he felt justified in saving Benny after Benny killed humans too.” Sam sighed, slumped against the bookshelf. “He was mad at me for not looking for him, which was fair. And when it came time for me to finish the trials, he didn’t trust me alone in the church either. I just --”  
  
Castiel said, “Dean loves you.”  
  
“ _They were inside me!_ ”   
  
Castiel recoiled.  
  
Sam spun around. “I’m a monster. Have been since I was a baby. And I’ve been doing my damnedest to repent for that. But people keep putting things  _in_ me that turn me into a monster. Those hunters who shoved demon blood down my throat. Meg. And then Dean. And now Kevin’s dead, and…” He shook his head, drew in a shuddering breath. “Sorry, Cas. You don’t deserve to be stuck in the middle of this. You should go, check on Dean. Make sure he isn’t getting himself killed.”  
  
“I will, Sam. If there’s anything I can do for you --”  
  
“Look out for Dean,” he said.  
  
Castiel nodded, rose to his feet, vanished with a sound like beating wings.  
  
There was so much Sam wanted to say to Dean.  _I’m sorry_  and  _how dare you_  and  _you put monsters in me_  and  _I can never stop being a monster_.  
  
What he wanted to say, more than anything, was  _Let’s be brothers again._


End file.
